Metadata
- Author: Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares
- ASIN: B00ZE96ZWY
- ISBN: 1591848369
- Reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZE96ZWY
- Kindle link
Highlights
traction thinking: the mind-set you need to adopt to maximize your chances of getting traction. — location: 147 ^ref-54391
Successful companies have built microsites, developed widgets, and created free tools that drive thousands of leads each month. — location: 193 ^ref-47264
Having a product or service that your early customers love, but having no clear way to get more traction is a major problem. — location: 248 ^ref-21422
Traction and product development are of equal importance and should each get about half of your attention. This is what we call the 50 percent rule: spend 50 percent of your time on product and 50 percent on traction. — location: 250 ^ref-56435
splitting your time evenly between product and traction will certainly slow down product development. However, it counterintuitively won’t slow the time to get your product successfully to market. — location: 269 ^ref-8675
In contrast, waiting until you launch a product to embark on traction development usually results in one or more additional product development cycles as you adjust to real market feedback. — location: 288 ^ref-26130
you should figure out what this goal means in terms of hard numbers. How many customers do you need and at what growth rate? — location: 303 ^ref-55692
Poor distribution—not product—is the number one cause of failure. — location: 402 ^ref-14878
The first step in Bullseye is brainstorming every single traction channel. If you were to advertise offline, where would be the best place to do it? If you were to give a speech, who would be the ideal audience? Imagine what success would look like in each channel, and write it down in your outer ring. — location: 407 ^ref-39707
For each channel, you should identify one decent channel strategy that has a chance of moving the needle. — location: 412 ^ref-48733
The second step in Bullseye is running cheap traction tests in the channels that seem most promising. — location: 418 ^ref-47063
How much will it cost to acquire customers through this channel? How many customers are available through this channel? Are the customers that you are getting through this channel the kind of customers that you want right now? — location: 427 ^ref-64404
The third and final step in Bullseye is to focus solely on the channel that will move the needle for your startup: your core channel. — location: 437 ^ref-50399
If everyone in your industry uses social ads to grow, you might be better off using another channel. — location: 464 ^ref-37382
The biggest mistake startups make when trying to get traction is failing to pursue traction in parallel with product development. — location: 486 ^ref-58353
Many entrepreneurs think that if you build a killer product, your customers will beat a path to your door. This line of thinking is a fallacy: that the best use of your time is always improving your product. In other words, “if you build it, they will come” is wrong. — location: 487 ^ref-21982
The goal of middle ring tests is to find a promising channel strategy to focus on. — location: 506 ^ref-12795
For example, offline ads is a traction channel, and billboards, transit ads, and magazine ads are all channel strategies within offline ads. — location: 508 ^ref-11760
Inner ring tests are designed to do two things. First, to optimize your chosen channel strategy to make it the best it can be. Second, to uncover better channel strategies within this traction channel. — location: 523 ^ref-9248
For example, for targeting blogs you can tweak which blogs to target, what type of content to push, and what the call to action is in this content. — location: 527 ^ref-18256
For search engine marketing, you can tweak keywords, ad copy, demographics, and landing pages. — location: 528 ^ref-38222
Making A/B testing a habit (even if you run just one test a week) will improve your efficiency in a traction channel by two or three times. — location: 537 ^ref-7464
Once you truly focus on a channel, you will become an expert in it. — location: 543 ^ref-17446
the company that leverages a newer platform that’s growing quickly will have a significant advantage over companies chasing the same old methods. — location: 561 ^ref-7451
what you choose to focus on should relate directly back to your traction goal. — location: 613 ^ref-28435
If you need to raise money in X months, what traction do you need to show to do so? — location: 626 ^ref-38839
Clear subgoals provide accountability. — location: 628 ^ref-18391
By placing traction activities on the same calendar as product development and other company milestones, you ensure that enough of your time will be spent on traction. — location: 629 ^ref-31122
Critical Path is a framework to help you decide what not to do. — location: 650 ^ref-52169
Targeting Blogs Publicity Unconventional PR Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Social and Display Ads Offline Ads Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Content Marketing Email Marketing Viral Marketing Engineering as Marketing Business Development (BD) Sales Affiliate Programs Existing Platforms Trade Shows Offline Events Speaking Engagements Community Building — location: 656 ^ref-49210
You can get a competitive advantage by acquiring customers in ways your competition isn’t. — location: 665 ^ref-2758
Targeting blogs prospective customers read is one of the most effective ways to get your first wave of customers. — location: 698 ^ref-3228
To hit those numbers, Noah created a quant-based marketing spreadsheet like this: — location: 711 ^ref-43030
those searches that are searched a lot and clumped at the front are called “fat-head” keywords. — location: 1438 ^ref-6628
SEO comes down to two things: content and links. — location: 1516 ^ref-13992
The more aligned your content is with the keywords it’s targeting, the better it will rank. Similarly, the more links you can get from credible and varying sources, the better your rankings. — location: 1517 ^ref-21972
Remember, links are the dominant factor in a site’s ranking for a given term. — location: 1530 ^ref-58263
The most common hurdle in content marketing is writer’s block. To overcome it, simply write about the problems facing your target customers. — location: 1601 ^ref-41281
The secret to shareable content is showing readers they have a problem they didn’t know about, or at least couldn’t fully articulate. — location: 1610 ^ref-42154
Unbounce engaged in any online forum where conversations were taking place about online marketing, and did its best to contribute. — location: 1615 ^ref-13734
It was particularly successful reaching out to influential people on Twitter. It would simply follow marketing mini-celebrities and ask them for feedback on recent posts. — location: 1616 ^ref-20783
One of the best methods of growing your audience is guest posting. — location: 1618 ^ref-7559
Having a strong company blog can positively impact at least eight other traction channels—SEO, publicity, email marketing, targeting blogs, community building, offline events, existing platforms, and business development. — location: 1632 ^ref-36589